"Pointless slaughter is the supreme triumph of amoral will"

Mark Steyn writes today,

A republic requires virtue, and the decline of virtue is accompanied necessarily by the decline of the concept of evil, and its substitution by exculpatory analysis of the "motives" of evil. A more useful conversation would be on what it takes to remove the most basic societal inhibition - including the instinctive revulsion that would prevent most of us from taking the lives of strangers, including in this case eighteen-month-old babies. That inhibition is weaker in the dar al-Islam, because of Islam's institutional contempt for "the other" (unbelievers) but also because of the rewards promised in the afterlife. Thus, violence is sanctioned by paradise. That is the precise inversion of our society, and yet the weakening of inhibition seems to be proceeding here, too. A church sealed off by yellow police tape: a shameful and astonishing sight, and yet one senses that it will neither shame nor astonish us for long, that something else will come along to make the records books and distract a couple of news cycles.

It was not always so. Over five years ago, I wrote:

If you recall the spate of American school shootings around the turn of the century, you may also remember that in the immediate aftermath of September 11 they ceased — almost as if, in a nation fired to righteous anger and waging war in a just cause, even the most solipsistic psychos can discern that taking out Grade Six will look like an act of feeble narcissism. But the years go by, and righteous anger fades to WMD, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Bush lied . . . and the lone-wolf sociopath returns.

"Solipsistic psychos" and "feeble narcissism": As I write, someone is on the airwaves promising that we will soon know the "motive" of the shooter. To dignify what drove this guy to do what he did as "motive" is to torture the word beyond meaning.

...I don't think it's a surprise that a vapid culture produces vapid murderers. In a sense, the unusual seriousness of the immediate post-9/11 era imposed a discipline on "feeble narcissism" that extended even unto those "solipsistic psychos".

One should not underestimate the effectiveness of cultural pressures. For a couple of days last week, everyone on TV was an Uzbek activist. My own experience of that benighted stan is limited to a few days in and around Tashkent and Samarkand, not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Say what you will about the Commies, but they held the lid on Islam: The Uzbeks I met were nominal, residual Muslims; they consumed alcohol at a fairly impressive rate to this semi-Irishman and there was no imam to give them a hard time over it because the mosques had all been closed. Then in the Nineties the Wahhabists and Salafists showed up and started walking around a ton of Saudi cash, and slowly, inevitably, Islam awoke...

...America's four deadliest single-shooter mass murders occurred in the last decade. Only one of them - the Orlando nightclub massacre - can be said to have a political or ideological component. The rest seem to be a peculiarly contemporary form of narcissism - that, when my life heads south, the only way to give it meaning is to take large numbers of people with me. There is no cause, no fealty, no "Allahu Akbar!" - because pointless slaughter is the supreme triumph of amoral will: Who needs Allah? You're your own Allah. Unlike Manchester or Nice or Paris or Berlin or Brussels, there is no meaning: Indeed, the only meaning is the meaninglessness; that is the point - the black void at the heart of the act.

Texas officials now believe they have their "motive" - in their words, "a domestic situation going on in this family"; in my words, "the black void at the heart of the act". It is a grim phenomenon, its accelerating proliferation is deeply disturbing, and it is not unconnected to the broader societal weakness in which Islam senses its opportunity.

Read more here.

The biker plumber shot him, and he may have also shot himself. The point is, he's dead!

It has seemed to me that Texas authorities have not been too concerned with how the gunman died. Everyone just seems glad he is dead.

Along comes reporting by The UK Daily Mail. Yes, we have to get our real news from England now!

Stephen Willeford

Stephen Willeford

Hannah Perry reports,

Two quick-thinking locals have been hailed as heroes for stopping the man responsible for the worst ever mass shooting in Texas which left 26 dead.

Stephen Willeford, 55, confronted gunman Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, when he was leaving First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, wounding him, before he and Johnnie Langendorff, 27, chased him in a car after he fled.

During the 95mph car chase, Kelley lost control of his vehicle and ran off the road, before shooting himself in the head. He called his father shortly before to say he had been shot and didn't think he was going to make it.

Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Director Freeman Martin said Willeford ran out his home barefoot with his rifle and 'engaged the suspect'.

A local resident told DailyMail.com that Willeford, who attends a different church, was first alerted to the shooting when his daughter called him saying there was a man in body armor gunning down church goers during mass.

He grabbed his gun and headed down to confront the gunman.

One slight correction Hannah. Baptists don't call their worship services "mass."

Willeford, a local plumber with no military experience, is however an excellent shot according to the resident, and when he came face to face with Kelley, he shot in between his body armor, hitting him in his side.

At this point Langendorff, who has a tattoo of a Texas Longhorn on his neck and who was headed to his girlfriend's house, came across the exchange of fire.

When Kelley dropped his Ruger assault rifle and fled in an SUV, Willeford came up to Langendorff and hopped in his truck.

Langendorff told KSAT 12 that he'd been speeding at 95mph, while on the phone to dispatch, while Willeford kept his rifle trained on the gunman's car.

As they approached a sharp curve in the road, near the 307 and 539, he said Kelley appeared to lose control and his car swerved off the road.

'That's when I put the truck in park,' he said. 'The other gentleman jumped out, and had his rifle on him. He didn't move after that.'

Read more here.
So the plumber shot him, and he may also have shot himself at the end. Oh, and don't judge a man by his neck tattoo!

Did the Good Samaritans kill him?

Fox News reports that the shooter at the church in Texas was shot at by the two guys who chased him at speeds up to 95 mph. I wonder if one of them killed him.

“His parents had him on high doses of ‘psych’ meds from 6th to 9th grade, the time I knew him,” said the student, who only wished to be identified as Reid.

Another classmate who spoke to Fox News and wished to remain anonymous described Kelley as a quiet student, though he had his share of friends.

“He recently added me on [Facebook]. I accepted hence we went to school together, and any time I saw him on my timeline he was sharing stuff about guns and being Atheist,” she said. “He was pretty negative. The last post I remember was of a rifle.”

Chatter amongst other students on Facebook who say they knew Kelley suggested he had a volatile relationship with his parents.

One student said Kelley used to tell her about issues with his dad, while another said they watched Kelley verbally abuse his parents.

Kelley was also a member of his high school’s football team, Reid said. One student said Kelley’s father would go “crazy” if Kelley messed up on the field.

Brittany Adcock, a 22-year-old who told NBC News that she dated Kelley for two months when she was 13 and he was 18, said Kelley would constantly call her after she broke off the relationship.

"He would offer me money to hang out with him quite a bit. There has been one point that I called the police because he was just calling me so much I wanted to report harassment," Adcock told the network. "One time he told me I should move in with him and his wife and that he would take care of me as long as I walked around topless."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday said there was a connection between the "very deranged individual" and the church where the slayings took place, telling "FOX & Friends" that people will learn about a link.

"I don't think the church was just randomly attacked," he said. "I think there was a reason why the shooter chose this church."

The gunman was also denied a Texas gun permit, according to Abbott.

"He was rejected either because he did not fully answer all the questions that are required to get a Texas gun permit, or he answered those questions wrong, that we still don't know," he said.

Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt told Fox News that Kelley's former father-in-law did attend the First Baptist Church, but he and his wife were not there Sunday.

His ex-mother-in-law’s P.O. Box was also listed as having a mailing address in Sutherland Springs, the Daily Beast reported.

Kelley previously registered to vote in Colorado in 2014 and listed his address as a parking space in a RV park in Colorado Springs, according to the New York Times.

A woman who lived in the spot next to the address said a man of similar age and description lived in that space for a few months during that time, and that he had a pit bull puppy that was left tied up in the sun all day.

She told the New York Times that there was an incident where police were called because the man -- who she never learned the name of -- struck the dog in the head, leading to a standoff with police in which the man refused to come out of his trailer for an hour.

Records show Kelley was charged with cruelty to animals in August 2014 but the case was dropped, the New York Times reported.

"All I know is he stopped another resident right over here and said, 'Lets go we got an active shooter, we need to get him stopped,' and they were chasing him," he said. "They were shooting rounds at him and then he went off the road, we don't know if he was actually hit again or what, but wrecked out. He was from my understanding self-inflicted gun shot wound."

Read more here.

More information about the killer in Texas

Kate Feldman reports for the New York Daily News that the 26-year-old killer in Texas

He served in logistics readiness at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2010 until his discharge, spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told the Daily News.

...Kelley was reportedly given a dishonorable discharge and court-martialed in May 2014, according to CBS News.

The Air Force would not confirm when or how Kelley left.

From the CBS report:

As he exited the church, a local resident grabbed his gun and pursued the suspect, who dropped his weapon and fled the scene.

...The suspect was later found dead inside his vehicle. Officials are unsure if he was shot by a resident or suffered a self inflicted gunshot wound, said Freeman Martin, regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

27 people dead and dozens injured in massacre at a Texas church. Police kill the shooter.

Bob Price reports at Breitbart,

A mass casualty shooting near San Antonio, Texas, left at least 27 people dead and dozens injured. Reports from Sutherland Springs, Texas, indicate that multiple people have been taken to area hospitals. The gunman is reported to be dead after deputies cornered him about five miles from the scene.

Population of Sutherland Springs? 643.
Read more here.